The Trek and First Impressions

(The Nile River from Zamalek)

I left for Cairo from JFK on Thursday, January 22 around 11PM. Since the flight was to London, I enjoyed waiting for it as more and more British people showed up and I got to listen to some amazing accents. On the flight to London I was determined to use as much as the 6 hour flight time to sleep, but then I saw they had the David Bowie episode of Flight of the Conchords available to watch, so I delayed that plan for a while. When I did try to sleep, they brought out a full dinner with mediocre beef and mashed potatoes, so sleep was once again delayed. I couldn't really fall asleep when I tried afterwards, but it didn't really matter because I was pretty awake when the plane landed in London.

At Heathrow Airport in London I met up with some AU people I knew, and then we waited for about 5 hours to leave for Cairo. As much as I would've loved to leave the airport and see some London tourist sites, I didn't want to bring my carryon bags with me and didn't want to go through security again. Once they told us where the gate was, we soon realized that the flight from London to Cairo was almost half AUC students from all over the US. I think AU has more students going then any other school though.

I still couldn't really sleep on the flight from London to Cairo, and unfortunately since it was dark, I couldn't see any landscapes below. However, soon enough we ended up descending into what looked like the surface of Mars if it had incredibly thick smog. After landing at Cairo Airport our passports were just checked for a visa and we collected our baggage. There were about 40 AUC students needing pickup, but luckily we had enough vans to fit everyone and their baggage. We actually didn't even go through customs, since all of the AUC students went through as a large group where we were told to make sure that strangers didn't mix in with us.

The drive to dorm seemed pretty surreal with the completely different architecture and smog making all of the lights brighter, and I noticed that drivers in Cairo more or less ignore lane markings on highways. After everyone got to the dorm after 1AM, we were assigned rooms seemingly at random. I was assigned to a quadruple with 3 other people that were on my flight, even though I was told twice that I was going to be in a double. One roommate was just reassigned to a double, so maybe I can also or hope that the room remains a triple.

THE INTERESTING PART

So today my AU friends and I did lot of walking around Cairo on a quest to buy mobile phones, toiletries, and food. I also had to buy a power converter for my laptop since I nearly melted a 50W one last night. Here are some things I noticed about Cairo, conveniently listed in bullet form.

-As I expected, it's pretty warm here and I am terrified of when it will get uncomfortably hot. I walked around today with a long sleeve button-up shirt with no jacket and was never cold.
-There's Egyptian security forces everywhere, practically on every street corner. They wear black uniforms, including a beret that looks like a pancake on their head if it doesn't fit well.
-Google in Cairo automatically directs you to "Google Misr" (Misr means Egypt in Arabic), meaning while my search results are in English, the details and toolbars on the page are in Arabic. I wonder if this is because of government censorship.
-There's stray cats everywhere in Egypt.
-The area of Egypt I'm in, Zamalek, is relatively westernized compared to other sections. This can be seen by the Pizza Hut, Cinnabon, Hardee's, and Radio Shack that I saw today. I also saw ads for McDonalds and KFC.
-There are very few stoplights or traffic signs at all in the area I'm in, with the exception of "one way." I have yet to see a stop sign at an intersection in the area.
-Taxi drivers slow down and honk their horn to get your attention when they pass you if they don't have any passengers. If you look at the driver, he'll offer you a ride, so it's best to ignore unless necessary.
-People go out of their way for you to get tips, even if it's unnecessary. Two friends and I bought a case of bottled water each (everyone says not to drink the tap water here), and a guy put them on a hand truck and took them to our dorm building without asking. Not wanting to be rude, we let him, and we all tipped him afterwards. However, I'll probably end up drawing the line on this in the future.
-At certain points in the day, you hear the Muslim call to prayer from several mosques, usually around the same time. I'm still not exactly sure what this means, since we heard it one time and no one really stopped what they were doing.
-Some Egyptians speak English to you very well and without you speaking it to them first, while others speak almost none. I feel like I haven't used Arabic as much as I could have today out of fear of embarrassing myself, but hopefully I'll do it more in the future. Whether I'll have any idea what they say back to me is another question.

Well that's all for the bullets. Everyone accomplished their goal of buying a mobile phone today, and everyone bought the cheapest phone available. While it doesn't slide or flip open, it does have snake. I think the fact that 5 people buying the same phone needing around the same credit frustrated the salesman (it takes a while to activate them all and get them ready), he at least had a sense of humor about it. Then we all had out first meal in Cairo, strangely enough at an Italian restaurant where I got pasta with meat sauce. The food wasn't bad, but I was more excited for the Coca-Cola here which is made with real sugar instead of corn syrup. After lunch we found a giant store that's kind of like a small Target or Wal-Mart, where I'll probably end up visiting a lot.

I don't really know what's planned for orientation week, but hopefully I'll get to see some interesting sites sooner rather than later.